Review: Melinda Marie Jette’s “At the Hearth of the Crossed Races” OSU Press, 2015.

 

Melinda Marie Jette’s 2015 book, At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, expands upon previous historical analysis of the beginnings of the Oregon territory, the fur trade and tribal relations in Western Oregon. Jette’s premise, that there has been an “inclination to overlook the French Canadian trappers, and by extension their bicultural families and Native kin,” is well founded. This is a timely addition to the literature of the Oregon Territory.

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Captain Abel Douglass

Abel Douglass was born on Isle au Haut, Maine as part of a seafaring maritime family. Family history states that their origin in Scotland was also connected with maritime seafaring. Spurred by American desires of westward expansion, and searching for opportunity in the California Gold Rush, like many Americans in the mid-19th century, the family traveled to San Francisco, California on the California Packet in 1850. The Douglas family and several dozen other families in Maine contributed to the construction of the California Packet, and under the direction of Captain Kimball they all sailed together to California, where the ship … Continue reading Captain Abel Douglass